Wednesday, November 30, 2011

In the wake of yesterday’s attack by “students” on the British embassy in Iran, the British government has ordered the closure of the Iranian embassy in London. It has also given Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the UK.

In other news, the Fed and the central banks of the EU, Canada, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland have reduced the interest rate on dollar liquidity swap lines, which makes it easier for governments afflicted by the debt crisis to solve their liquidity problems. This action reassured the stock markets in the USA and Europe, which rose by more than 4%.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, LN, Mary Abdelmassih, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

This is the seventh of an eight-part history of the Transatlantic Counterjihad. Links to the first six parts are at the bottom of this post.

A debt of gratitude is owed to the Counterjihad Collective for its work on this project.

A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihadby the Counterjihad Collective

VI. Unofficial Opposition to the Counterjihad

In addition to official state opposition to the criticism of Islamization and sharia, there exists a wide range of ostensibly private organizations arrayed against those who resist Islamization. A brought coalition of Islamic groups and radical left-wing organizations, especially from the anarchist and anti-globalist Left, is frequently brought to bear against groups that publicly declare their differences with Islam.

In Europe the left-wing side of the coalition often includes rank-and-file members of the Socialists, the Social Democrats, the Communists, Labour, and other parties of the traditional socialist Left. Members of Labour parties have been observed marching arm-in-arm with Islamic groups while some of their fellow demonstrators could be heard in the background chanting “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!” The Labour Party in Norway — the same party whose younger members Anders Behring Breivik targeted for death on Utøya — strongly backs Hamas, and has suggested that the terrorist group should be supported with Norwegian taxpayers’ money.

Opposition to the Israeli “occupation” and strong support for Hamas and Hezbollah go hand-in-hand with widespread anti-Semitism on the European Left. Opponents of sharia and mass immigration are generally labeled “neo-Nazis” and “fascists”, but the uncomfortable truth is that anti-Semites are overwhelmingly found on the Socialist Left. Support for Israel is one of the common characteristics of the anti-Islamization parties in Europe. In Belgium, for example, the Islam-critical party Vlaams Belang is the only major party that staunchly defends Israel’s right to exist.

Efforts to silence the opponents of sharia and Islamization often turn violent. In Britain the group Unite Against Fascism deploys its members in carefully coordinated violence against the English Defence League during EDL demonstrations. On the Continent, a widespread movement known as Anti-Fascist Action (AFA, or Antifa) performs much the same function. When anti-sharia organizations stage rallies and demonstrations, the Antifas come from all over Western Europe to throw rocks, bottles, and fireworks at the demonstrators, and beat up those unfortunates who can be isolated from their respective groups.

The police — who are more than ready to arrest the anti-Islamization demonstrators on the slightest pretext — usually stand by and do nothing when the Antifas attack. Unless firearms are employed or lives are at risk, standing orders generally instruct the police not to intervene when the anti-fascists act violently against opponents of Islamization. In some countries, notably Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, the Antifas have at least the tacit support of the authorities, who presumably find them useful for disrupting the actions of anti-Islamization activists and demonstrators. In Sweden, members of the Sweden Democrats have had their houses vandalized, and have even been stabbed by “anti-fascist” thugs.

Forty-five years after his death, springtime has finally come for Sayyid Qutb and Egypt.

Mr. Qutb took over as leader of Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen — better known as the Muslim Brotherhood — in 1949. He succeeded its founder, Hassan al-Banna, after the latter was assassinated by King Farouk’s government. Mr. Qutb himself was hanged by Nasser regime in 1966, but by that time he had become a popular and influential writer, read by millions of Egyptians and other Muslims. He was the principal theoretician of the modern Islamic revival, and his works have continued to inspire Muslim readers since his death. From Yogyakarta to Casablanca, from Dushanbe to Abuja, in Arabic or translation, Sayyid Qutb remains the most popular writer of fundamentalist Islamic literature.

The patience of the Muslim Brotherhood has been rewarded at last. With the exception of Algeria — where the military is still keeping the fundamentalists from gaining control — Ikhwan regimes have been installed in power across the whole of North Africa. The Brotherhood took control in Libya thanks to NATO’s destruction of the Qaddafi regime, but the other countries have chosen it through the ballot box. Tunisia elected Ennahda, an MB affiliate, just a few weeks ago. But the country hasn’t settled into a stable, peaceful situation as a result — Islamic fundamentalists continue their violent demonstrations, demanding the abolition of the country’s remaining secular practices and institutions. As a result, the Tunisian government has extended the state of emergency until the end of the year.

(ANSAmed) - RABAT, NOVEMBER 29 - King Mohamed VI of Morocco has officially appointed the head of the moderate Islamic “Justice and Development” party, Abdelilah Benkirane as the country’s Premier. The PJD took 27% of votes in last week’s political elections, winning 107 of the 395 seats in parliament.

“The King has today nominated the General Secretary of the Party of Justice and Development, Benkirane, who now should form a coalition government with the other parties,” an official communiqué from the royal palace says. Abdellilah Benkirane expressed his willingness to listen to the militants of the February 20 Movement: “if they make serious proposals, one should listen to them. If one single Moroccan makes a serious proposal, they should be listened to. They are in their thousands”.

Egypt is next in line. The Egyptian parliamentary elections are being held in stages, so the official tally will not be certified until January. However, initial results make it obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood will be claiming the largest share of the vote. According to The Daily Mail, the Ikhwan’s portion of the count is 40%, but ANSAmed projects it as significantly higher:

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood in the Lead, Press

(ANSAmed) — Cairo, November 30 — The Muslim Brotherhood are the top party in Egypt according to the first reports by local press outlets. While vote counting continues for the uninominal part of the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections, indications show that the Freedom and Justice party, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Salafi party coalition Al Nour are in the lead in six governorates, according to the daily paper Al Ahram. According to the daily Al Shouruk, Freedom and Justice raked in 47% of the votes while the secular and moderate Egyptian Bloc coalition received 22%. In the first round of voting, which ended yesterday, the residents of nine governorates cast their votes, including those in Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Asyut and Port Said.

The next Egyptian government will be a coalition headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, and a spokesman for the Ikhwan reminded the public that sharia will be the basis of the government’s judicial system:

The following article was published today in Aftenposten, and has been kindly translated by our Norwegian correspondent NA. The translator includes this note:

I read this article in Aftenposten which I hope every Norwegian — and every Westerner, for that matter — will read. I thought it was so good I just had to translate it.

Fjordman sends a reference to an article in Rights.no about the same author, noting:

The Marxist writer Jørgen Sandemose published an essay in the Danish weekly Weekendavis this November where he very severely criticized the Left for their excessively positive attitudes towards Islam.

The author is a long-time Communist who teaches at the University of Oslo. His name is well known in Norway because of his father, who defined the so-called jantelov, the “pattern of group behaviour towards individuals within Scandinavian communities, which negatively portrays and criticises individual success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate.”

Today’s article continues Mr. Sandemose’s earlier line of criticism, and is particularly notable for its Marxist viewpoint:

[This translation has been removed at the request of the author and the editors of Aftenposten.]

The first part of my three-part series on the “hate speech” case against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has been published at FrontPage Mag. I’ll post all three parts as a single article over the coming weekend. In the meantime, here are some excerpts:

On February 15, 2011, the Austrian Counterjihad activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted of “hate speech” in a Vienna courtroom for what she said in a private seminar about Muhammad and Islam.

The original charge was “incitement to hatred”. On the second day of her trial, the judge at her own discretion added a second charge, “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion.” Elisabeth was acquitted of the first charge, but convicted of the second. She was sentenced to pay a fine of €480. Her case is currently being appealed to Austria’s highest court. If the verdict is upheld, and she refuses to pay the fine, she will spend two months in jail.

How could this happen in a modern European democratic state which recognizes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enshrines the right to free speech in its Constitution?

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain failed to contain the “bimbo eruptions” in his campaign as effectively as Bill Clinton did twenty years ago. The latest allegations — concerning an Atlanta woman who says she had a 13-year affair with Mr. Cain — have made the candidate reconsider his bid for the Republican nomination.

In other news, Russia has sent a warship to Syria to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, whose government is attempting to crush an uprising amidst UN sanctions and international criticism.

Thanks to alcade, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JP, J-PD, KGS, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

This is the sixth of an eight-part history of the Transatlantic Counterjihad. Links to the first five parts are at the bottom of this post.

A big thank-you to the Counterjihad Collective for undertaking this project.

A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihadby the Counterjihad Collective

V. Official Opposition to the Transatlantic Counterjihad

The Origins of Anti-Islamic Sentiment

The Islamization of Europe was a (perhaps inadvertent) byproduct of the need to import foreign labor to the continent in the decades after the Second World War. The process fed on itself, as liberal immigration laws and “family reunification” policies brought ever-increasing numbers of unassimilable foreigners, most of them Muslims, into Western Europe. The official state policy of Multiculturalism allowed newcomers to disappear into ever-growing enclaves, where they could live and function as if they were in their native countries, without any requirement that they integrate into the host population.

These new urban ghettos put Muslims into direct conflict with native working-class and lower-middle-class people, who were their immediate neighbors. As immigrants and their descendants became more and more dependent on state benefits — which they drew far in excess of their proportion of the population — their seeming parasitism exacerbated the hostility between the indigenes and the newcomers.

To make matters worse, Muslim immigrants were far more likely than the natives to commit violent crimes, and an overwhelming number of their victims were indigenous Europeans. This disproportionate criminality was especially evident where the crime of rape was concerned. Muslim immigrants were apprehended and prosecuted for rape in overwhelming numbers. Over a five-year period in Oslo, every single stranger-rape in which the perpetrator could be identified was committed by a non-Norwegian Muslim.

The correlation between Islamic ideology and this disparity in criminal propensities is open to dispute. However, the statistics are telling: rape is an overwhelmingly Muslim crime in Western Europe. Its most brutal and barbaric form, gang rape, is almost entirely a Muslim phenomenon.

The wealthier and more privileged social groups have been mostly insulated from the worst of these phenomena through residential isolation in well-protected neighborhoods, and by their access to private schooling for their children. The brunt of immigrant lawlessness has been borne by the lower and lower-middle classes, who are subjected to harassment and violence on an almost daily basis.

Given these ominous trends, it hardly comes as a surprise that the resistance to immigration and Islamization originated mainly with the working class.

This issue has thrown ordinary citizens of modest means into serious conflict with the elite governing class. The latter do not experience Islamization in the same way as their less fortunate neighbors, and they continue to place their faith in Multiculturalism, “tolerance”, and the ever-elusive process of “integration”.

The class disparity is deepened by the political establishment’s dependence on and commitment to mass immigration and Multiculturalism. Immigrants now form an all but unified bloc of voters which national and local politicians must assiduously court. There is no going back: any attempt to put the brakes on Muslim expansion would threaten the political, social, and economic order.

Thus the only option for the establishment is to “double down”: more immigration, renewed Multiculturalism, and increased “tolerance”. This places the political class on a collision course with their own people.

Official Repression of the Counterjihad

The inevitable resistance by the working-class native population — along with parts of the literate middle class — prompted repeated attempts on the part of Western governments, the EU, and the UN to suppress what is variously known as “racism”, “xenophobia”, and “Islamophobia”.

As time went on, and gentler forms of suppression failed to have the desired effect, official efforts to eliminate the Counterjihad have become more overt. Harassment, public demonization, shunning, removal of police protection, loss of employment, withdrawal of public benefits, and legal prosecution: these are just a few of the methods that have been used over the last few years in an attempt to shut down the opposition to sharia and Islamization.

Five years ago the victims of official government repression could be counted on the fingers of one hand. As of November 2011, however, there are too many examples to enumerate. Below is just a small sample from across the Western world of people who have been legally harassed, prosecuted, or threatened with prosecution:

As reported here previously, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met twice recently in Vienna to discuss the need to fight “racism” and “xenophobia”. The following report on the OSCE meeting earlier this month was prepared by Bruce Lieske of ACT! for America.

Report on my Experience at the OSCE Meeting

10-11 November 2011, Vienna, Austria

Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting

Prevention of Racism, Xenophobia and Hate Crimes through Educational and Awareness-Raising Initiatives

by Bruce Lieske

It is my opinion that very few Americans know what the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is — when and why it was founded, and what it has done. The opportunity to attend this meeting presented itself because of my friendship with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Austrian chapter head of ACT! for America, and the circumstance that my wife lives in Vienna.

Representing ACT! for America, I attended the meeting with Elisabeth (Pax Europa), Henrik Clausen (International Civil Liberties Alliance) and Gerhard Engelmayer (Freidenkerverband — Wien). There were approximately 175 people in attendance. The venue at the Hofburg, Vienna, was similar to a mini-UN. The inner ring of seats/microphones was reserved for some 70 participating countries, including the United States. The outer ring was comprised of NGOs. Most of the speeches were in English, but on occasion speakers from Ukraine, Russia and Austria spoke in their native languages and an immediate translation was available.

The four of us sat together and we spoke several times in response to a presenter. The response to a presenter is called an “intervention.” On one occasion my intervention addressed the issue of the definition of words. I said that if we truly intended to be united as different cultures, we needed to clearly and closely define terms, especially the term “Islamophobia.” I told the assembly that “Islamophobia” means different things to a Muslim and a non-Muslim — and illustrated my point with a story.

The OSCE is an opportunity for organizations like ACT! for America and The United West to influence governments. NGOs have virtually the same opportunity to speak as the representatives of participating States at these meetings. The representatives of participating States undoubtedly have influence over legislation in their countries, which means that ACT! for America and other similar organizations have not only the power of the press, but can possibly influence legislation.

Therefore, ACT! for America has a mini-pulpit in Europe and we ought to use it — in order to help our European friends stem the power of stealth jihad, and bring this problem out in the open. It must, however, be done tactfully, clearly and diplomatically. I recommend more people from ACT! for America attend these meetings in the future. It would be excellent if Brigitte Gabriel herself could attend.

“Students” stormed the British Embassy in Tehran today, chanting slogans, burning the British flag, looting, pitching things out of windows, and generally recapitulating the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy.

Here’s a brief CNN report on the events. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Interestingly enough, the Iranian government initially said that six hostages had been taken at the embassy, but that report was quickly withdrawn. According to Reuters:

Iranian Protesters Storm British Embassy

(Reuters) - Iranian protesters stormed two British Embassy compounds in Tehran Tuesday, smashing windows, hurling petrol bombs and burning the British flag in a protest against sanctions imposed by Britain, live Iranian television showed.

Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency said protesters took six British diplomatic staff hostage from an embassy compound in the north of the city but it withdrew the story from its website minutes later without giving any explanation.

Our Norwegian correspondent NA sends a brief translation of the latest on Anders Behring Breivik, as reported by Aftenposten:

Behring Breivik has been declared criminally insane. The psychologists conclude that he has developed paranoid schizophrenia over a long period of time thus making him the person he is today. This mental illness has symptoms such as delusions of greatness and persecution resulting in a drastic change of personality.

This conclusion will be followed up by a further nine specialists to ensure the quality of the report. This news will however yield minor consequence for the main negotiations. Behring Breivik must be declared guilty of his actions at the Ministry of Government and the murders at Utøya in order for the courts to transfer him to forced mental health care [also known as “lifetime” in Norway, seeing as though you have to be declared “not a threat to society” in order to be released].

Anders Behring Breivik, who carried out the July 22nd attacks that killed 77 people in Norway, may never go to jail after psychiatrists ruled him criminally insane, a prosecutor said on Tuesday. Instead, the 32-year-old gunman could spend the rest of his life in a mental institution, prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh told reporters in Oslo.

The prosecutor was speaking after forensic experts submitted a psychiatric evaluation on Tuesday in which they found the gunman “insane”. “In such instances that the person suffers from such a serious disorder that it would not be warranted to sentence him to prison… he can be ordered to stay in mental health care institutions,” said Bejer Engh.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Moody’s is warning that every EU country having the euro as its currency may see its credit rating downgraded if a solution to the Eurozone debt crisis cannot be found. China, which previously declined to help the EU by buying additional bonds, is eyeing investments in European infrastructure such as railways and factories. European countries are desperate for cash, so the Chinese may be able to pick up some bargain items during the debt crisis.

Meanwhile, some analysts believe that the only hope for Europe is a bailout by the Federal Reserve.

In other news, Germany has called for direct peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

This is the fifth of an eight-part history of the Transatlantic Counterjihad. Links to the first four parts are at the bottom of this post.

Many thanks to the Counterjihad Collective for all its hard work on this project.

A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihadby the Counterjihad Collective

IV. The Rosetta Stone Projects

Beginning in 2008, the Transatlantic Counterjihad has developed a streamlined system for the translation of texts and the subtitling of videos. The process we use has been dubbed the “Rosetta Stone Project”, in honor of the famous ancient Egyptian stele deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822.

When an important article, essay, or speech is published, a move is initiated among the various Counterjihad groups to have it translated into as many languages as possible. The influence of the text can be greatly extended if it is spread in multiple languages, and gives the author a much wider audience.

If the text is needed for subtitling a video, the propagation of the resulting translations can multiply the impact of the original version far past its initial range. Generally speaking, the typical Internet user prefers videos over articles, and YouTube is particularly effective at the “viral” spread of video-based ideas.

The importance of any text or video is determined by reader responses. When a critical threshold is reached — say, requests for seven different languages — it triggers the convening of the Rosetta Stone Group, and word goes out to volunteer translators that their help is needed. Multiple translators are potentially available for all the major European languages, which increases the likelihood for a quick turnaround in any given project.

Rosetta Stone projects in the past have included Geert Wilders’ movie Fitna, several of Mr. Wilders’ speeches, Col. Allen West’s speech at the Freedom Defense Initiative in Washington D.C., one of Pat Condell’s videos, and the videos of Ann Barnhardt burning the Koran (see detailed list below).

After the translated texts and/or subtitled videos have been made available, their distribution is coordinated via a “ring” of Counterjihad websites: Europe News, Gates of Vienna, ICLA, Politically Incorrect, Snaphanen, Tundra Tabloids, Uriasposten, Vlad Tepes, and other news sites and blogs. By mirroring these important posts at multiple sites in Europe, Canada, and the United States, their reach has been greatly extended. Many thousands of readers or viewers are thus able to access Counterjihad material — the kind of material that their own media outlets rarely feature — in dozens of different countries.

For many years Sweden was far ahead of Finland in its embrace of the joys of cultural enrichment. The Swedes were actively importing massive numbers of Third World immigrants — especially Muslims — decades before the Finns began. However, in recent years Finland’s ruling class has decided to catch up with Sweden and other multicultural utopias in Europe. Nowadays the benefits of mass immigration are relentlessly touted to Finish citizens.

Those who resist are being demonized as — you guessed it — “racists”. Like Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada, Finland has passed laws against “incitement against a religious or ethnic group”. The Finnish oligarchs are now using these legal means to ensure that their citizens accept their multicultural fate — or else.

The Finnish blogger Vasarahammer posted the following guest-essay at Tundra Tabloids about the increasingly totalitarian tactics employed against one particularly “racist” town in the north of Finland.

Finnish government fights internet racism

The Norwegian blogger Fjordman has sometimes described Sweden as softly totalitarian politically correct tyranny, meaning that dissidents who step out of line are punished by social exclusion or, at worst, by losing their job. However, there is no direct persecution by the state like in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Dissidents are neither sentenced to forced labor nor committed to mental hospitals like they used to be in the Soviet Union.

The Swedish way of controlling dissent is subtle. It does not rely on the state to carry out the actual punishment, but the media and the government organizations perform the task without resorting to force. In some cases, though, the self-styled anti-fascists do intimidate the opponents of the state ideology, but the state is not directly involved in the attempt to force the representatives of dissident political organizations to cease their activities.

It can be argued that the Swedes have had decades to fine-tune their methods of marginalizing dissent and keeping matters related to immigration outside of mainstream political discussion. Finland, on the other hand, still tries to learn the methods of controlling dissent, since the Finnish multicultural project began as late as in the early 1990s, when the arrival of Somalis from the Soviet Union spelled the end of the strict Finnish immigration policy of earlier decades.

Since then the Finnish authorities have tried to combat racism in different ways that are very familiar to everyone living in a politically correct society. The crude propaganda highlighting the positive aspects of multiculturalism is matched with demonization of racists, meaning those who do not embrace the multicultural project with adequate enthusiasm.

The Finnish way also relies more heavily on courts and law enforcement as a tool to suppress racist thought. This can be seen clearly in the case of Lieksa below, as well as in the several court cases in which internet bloggers have been convicted of incitement to ethnic hatred.

Lieksa — the “racist” city

The town of Lieksa located near the eastern border of Finland is famed for its natural beauty and the landscapes of Lake Pielinen. However, recently the town hit the headlines in Finnish media with allegations of racism.

People have been inquiring about the success of Fjordman’s recent fund-raising effort, and he sends this FAQ to answer some of their questions about the Fjordman Relocation Fund.

A message to all readers and donors to the relocation fund

1.

Yes, I have a bank account and I put all the donations there. Obviously I don’t want to publish my bank account number on the Internet.

2.

Yes, I do get the money you donate to me via Vlad Tepes’ PayPal account. Just be sure to mark it “for Fjordman” so Vlad will know to set it aside for me.

3.

Yes, People have been most generous. I am grateful for that.

4.

Yes, I have been acknowledging your gifts. Due to the turmoil in my life, it will take time to get through all of them but all donors with a working email address will receive a response from me.

5.

The primary goal of this fund drive was to find a safer place to live, thus the title for my fundraiser. Due to my donors’ generosity, I was able to cover the expenses associated with moving out of my old flat in Oslo. From there, I went to a safe location elsewhere.

6.

Another expense has been legal costs. I never thought I’d receive enough funding to begin to pay for those. I hope people don’t mind that some of their gifts were allocated for this. Yes, I will have to deal with most of the legal costs later, but all of you have given me a good start.

7.

Yes, I have been investigated and finally let go by the police. Technically I am only a “witness”, though what I was supposed to have witnessed is still a mystery. However this “witness” status entitled me to having my apartment ransacked and my computer equipment and personal belongings confiscated by the police. Ironically, had I actually been charged with something, I would’ve had the right to legal counsel. But since they simply “investigated” me without ever giving me a reason, I now have to pay all the legal expenses myself.

8.

The reason for legal representation was the police investigation. Had my lawyer not been present, the police dealings with me might have been worse. Even my lawyer was taken aback at how I was treated in his presence.

9.

The latest police information is that I have been “checked out” from the Breivik case. As I tried to tell them in the beginning, the police didn’t find anything to tie me to Breivik because there was nothing to find in the first place. I even got my socks back, after 100 days in captivity.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The incident on the Afghan-Pakistani border yesterday in which NATO forces killed at least 24 Pakistani troops has caused civil unrest in Pakistan. Mobs took to the streets and burned President Obama in effigy, as well as American flags. Sources in NATO say that its troops were acting in self-defense, that the Pakistanis opened fire first.

In other news, Moody’s has raised an eyebrow at Austria’s bonds, causing the Austrian government to take action to save its AAA bond rating. The issue is Austria’s questionable loans to its Eastern neighbors. Much of its investments in Eastern European debt consists of “toxic” assets, so Austria is pulling back its lending to Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and other countries in the former Soviet Bloc. Economists in the affected countries fear a credit crunch as a result.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Gaia, Insubria, Nick, Tartan Marine, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

This is the fourth of an eight-part history of the Transatlantic Counterjihad. Links to the first three parts are at the bottom of this post. The section on Counterjihad participation at OSCE “Human Dimension” meetings had to be split into two posts, and this is the second of those posts.

A debt of gratitude is owed to the Counterjihad Collective for its efforts in this project.

A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihadby the Counterjihad Collective

III. The Transatlantic Counterjihad at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (continued)

Speaking in plenary sessions:

Session I:

From Commitments to Implementation: Freedom of Religion or Belief in the OSCE Area

At the beginning of the main session, speakers representing several NGOs made reference to a recent murder in Dresden, Germany, in which a woman of Egyptian descent had been stabbed by a Russian immigrant. They voiced the opinion that OSCE participant countries should be much more assertive in countering any form of racism or anti-Islamic activities. The representative of COJEP (originally rooted in Millî Görüs) reiterated the call for governments to stop racism and anti-Islamic activities everywhere.

More on-topic, several speakers commented on the increase in vandalism against Jewish and Christian buildings, in particular the destruction of some 150 Christian buildings in Kosovo.

Benjamin Bull of the Alliance Defence Fund raised several issues for Christian organisations:

The misapplication of hate speech laws to stifle any religious expression.

The misapplication of anti-discrimination laws to force religious organisations to hire staff with beliefs and viewpoints contrary to that of the organisation.

Revoking tax benefits on basis of the above, or banning Christian organisations from university campuses, thus severely hampering the activities of these organisations.

ICLA fought for — and won — the opportunity to make this comment:

Referring to several speakers, ICLA agrees that the increasing frequency of vandalism against Christian and Jewish interests is a problem. Examples of these incidents are frequent, from relatively benign harassment over desecration to the extensive destruction of cultural heritage in Kosovo, as the Serbian speaker noted. This is a severe problem in upholding genuine freedom of religion. ICLA recommends that OSCE participating states act to protect citizens against such acts of intimidation.

On the other hand, ICLA firmly believes that religions do not need or deserve protection against free speech and criticism.

On a supplementary note: In spite of this being off-topic for this conference, speakers have made reference to the recent brutal murder in Dresden. We have full confidence in the German legal system to handle this criminal act, and emphasize that such events, not matter now evil, should not be used as a pretext for assaulting freedom of expression or implementing draconian legislation.

After the session, the official representative of Denmark approached us, thanking for the fine statement. It is notable, however, that the government representatives paid to be there are not making clear statements defending our civil liberties. Such problems are key reasons that good NGOs need to participate at OSCE, or bad OSCE recommendations may eventually lead to bad national law.

“Is there a right-radical program? Those who are pursuing one today are the extreme Left.”

The following article from Die Welt is a left-wing perspective on a historical fact that has been swept under the rug: the remnants of National Socialist ideology were kept alive by Communists and Socialists in postwar Europe.

Many thanks to JLH for the translation.

The Brown Legacy of Socialismby Freya Klier

November 22, 2011

Already at the time of the Turnaround [the political turning of East Germany after the Fall of the Wall], Freya Klier was on a death-list of the East German Neo-Nazis. She describes its roots in the German Democratic Republic [GDR] and explains why it is nonetheless necessary to seek dialogue about it.

In 1993, the West German chair of the Republicans, Franz Schönhuber, padded the then thin Western personnel with cadres from the East. He found especially worthy of sponsorship a professor who had for many years been a member of the SED [Socialist Unity Party of Germany], and head of the discipline of sociology in the section for Scientific Communism at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig. He became Saxon state head of the right-radical Republicans. In June, 1993, there was a party meeting in Augsburg and, during it, an “act of national reconciliation.”

In this connection, the party head enthuses about the GDR. At one point, he opines: “The GDR was much more German than the Federal Republic. Here, there was a sense of family, and not this dog-eat-dog society.” At another point, he praises the “orderly lock-step” in the GDR; yet again, its “total freedom from foreigners.” Schönhuber shared this perspective with a number of citizens of the deceased GDR and many socialist comrades.

Schönhuber had still not realized at all what these comrades were capable of: an anti-Semitism that had been nurtured for 40 years, as well as a vice-like hold on the extremely small minority of foreigners who were allowed to stay temporarily in the isolated GDR. After the flight of millions of GDR citizens, there was such a permanent shortage of workforce that the socialist leadership at the end of the 1970s decided reluctantly to admit contingents of Vietnamese and Mozambicans — for three years at a time, then they were exchanged for the next group.

“Fitchis” and Mozis” were housed in isolated housing developments. They were not allowed in the official guest restaurants. They could not leave the city without permission, performed menial labor in businesses and were not even allowed to learn German. Most importantly, their wives were under abortion compulsion — a fact which still makes right-radicals happy. Is there a right-radical program? Those who are pursuing one today are the extreme Left. And shortly after the fall of the Wall, they put the blame for the meanness they practiced on the West.

Right-radicalism now forged ahead unimpeded. In 1990, in the General Jewish Weekly Newspaper, I published my essay on anti-Semitism and xenophobia, which I had written deep in the GDR era. That got me place #8 on the death-list of the GDR Neo-Nazis, as an escapee confessed to me years later. I had written about what was going on in our elaborate German ward-heeler system when the “FRG” [West Germany] was still not present there.

The increasingly dictatorial behaviour of the unelected EU Commissioners rather proves the point made by Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who way back in 2006 stated that the political structure of the European Union was similar to that of the Supreme Soviet and the Politburo, and that the similarity was intentional.

The liberal-left are woefully ignorant of history, yet with their various humanities degrees they should know something of human nature, but even this appears to be beyond their intellectual grasp. The mental make-up of all dictators seeks one thing and one thing only — control over all others. Lenin once remarked that Communism was not actually about equality for the worker, but was rather about control. Total control.

Have we not seen this in the last few weeks? Frau Merkel and Monsieur Sarkozy are both on record stating their intention to wrest further EU control from the European electorate in the wake of the Eurozone economic catastrophe (inflicted by EU economic policy) and they are now doing this in spades.

Greek ex-Prime Minister Papandreou rather foolishly suggested the Greek people might like to influence their economic future in a democratic manner, only to be immediately toppled by the EU powers and replaced by Lucas Papademos, a man of impeccable Socialist economic credentials, who went from Governor of the Bank of Greece to Vice President of the European Central Bank (ECB) to Prime Minister of Greece. In other words an EU placeman in a previously democratic country.

In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was not brought down by his lurid sexual shenanigans or his alleged lifelong corruption, but because he dared to question the validity of the euro. Enter the incensed EU Politburo, and exit the aged yet curiously wrinkle-free lecherous Lothario, to be replaced by unelected former EU Commissioner Mario Monti and a cabinet of bankers and academics, not one of whom represents a single Italian political party. Is this democracy in action? No, it is totalitarianism, pure and simple.

This should come as no surprise to those who understand the dictatorial machinations of the EU. Countries such as Ireland and Denmark were allowed referendums, but when they refused to accept the EU’s vision of a Utopian Socialist future, they were alternately threatened and bribed until they eventually complied with the wishes of the unelected EU Commissioners.

We saw the same disregard for democracy in Britain in 2004 after the North East firmly rejected setting up a Regional Assembly, much to the fury of the Labour government, whose response was simply to carry on regardless of the will of the people. In 2007 Gordon Brown established nine regional government offices complete with regional ministers, as per the EU geographical division of England.

Britain has been shamefully treated by its own politicians. The Labour manifesto of 2005 stated the electorate would be allowed to vote on the Lisbon Treaty, but they lied. David Cameron, ever clever with words, managed to sound like he intended to offer a referendum, but of course he has not. So here we are, run effectively by unelected Socialists in Brussels, via a puppet government of supposed “Conservatives” in Westminster.

In the last week alone we discovered that the EU wishes to import millions more North African Muslim migrants into Europe and Britain through Mobility Partnerships, the aim of which is to make EU action “more migrant-centred, with the aim of empowering migrants and strengthening their human rights in countries of origin, transit and destination.”

William Hague, Foreign Secretary and EU poodle, heard the call and penned an article for the Daily Telegraph outlining the importance of Turkish accession into the EU, no matter what Amnesty International might have to say about Turkey’s attitude to Human Rights. What a curious situation: even as the Arab Spring descends into Koranic Winter, our impossibly stupid politicians press for their own countries to be overrun by people unable to function in liberal democracies.

Why does the EU wish to import these racially and culturally foreign people? The answer is very simple: divide and rule, break down the community and smash the nation state. The Russians did this after they annexed the Baltic States during WWII, when huge numbers of Russians were exported to the conquered territories in an attempt to dilute and “de-nationalise” the native populations, thereby easing Soviet control.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The British government acknowledges that it is engaged in contingency planning for the possible collapse of the euro. The Foreign Office is planning for worst-case scenarios in which rioting breaks out in Eurozone cities.

Meanwhile, the yield on Italian bonds has once again climbed above 7%, and the Indian rupee has fallen to a record low against the dollar.

In other news, the PVV says that Greenpeace is damaging the Netherlands’ reputation, and should be expelled from the country.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JP, Kitman, RE, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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We’ve all heard of the fictional “moderate” Muslim. Now it’s time to meet a double fiction: the “moderate Islamist”.

The BBC news reporter in this clip falls all over himself in his eagerness to reassure viewers about the results of Friday’s election in Morocco. The party that got the most seats in the election may be “Islamist”, but really, it’s not all that bad. No need to worry. Everyone can go back to sleep.

By the way — did you notice the woman in this report who had to show an unveiled photo ID in order to be able to vote? I always thought such practices were examples of racism.

The moderately extremist party in question is the Justice and Development Party (PJD). According to Wikipedia, “It should be noted that the Moroccan PJD is less liberal and modern than the Turkish AKP.” The AKP is, of course, the party of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been Islamizing Turkey since 2001. Mr. Erdoğan famously said, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

And the PJD is “less liberal” than the AKP. Yet the BBC says we have nothing to worry about, so how can we help but be reassured?

The Beeb wants us to know that the “moderate Islamist” party is really just about fighting bribery and corruption, and is not “extremist”. However, the PJD’s secretary-general, Saad Eddin Al Othmani, said in an interview [pdf] that “many of our efforts, such as combating bribery and corruption, are based in sharia.”

PJD’s agenda in parliament has occasionally taken it into pure sharia territory — calling for prohibition against alcohol consumption and distribution, and challenging media that it views as defacing Islamic principles.

So I’m going to hold off being reassured until I get some information that’s actually reassuring.

A horrific crime was committed last weekend in the vicinity of Gullestrup, a suburb of Herning in central Jutland. Kitman compiled the following report on the case, based on translated excerpts from Danish media articles and the blog Uriasposten.

Warning: The post below describes brutal violence against a small child. Readers who are sensitive to such descriptions should not read past the jump.

Earlier this week a rape case made headlines in the Danish press: “After Rape, a Lynch Atmosphere — Now There is War in Gullestrup”. But this is no ordinary rape case: the victim is a ten-year old indigenous Danish girl, and the suspected perpetrator is a 16-year-old boy of Somali background.

Ekstra Bladet talked with a friend of the father of the victim, who informed the paper that they would meet up, some 25 men armed with knives and baseball bats, and then go from door to door until they found the perpetrator. This however, was not the father’s intention.

The rape committed against a 10-year-old girl from Gullestrup last Saturday, was much crueler than the public was told. That was revealed today at the initial questioning in Herning, as the accused rapist from Gullestrup appeared before the judge at 1:37pm

This BBC television report describes the Salafist insurgency currently underway in the Russian republic of Dagestan, in the Caucasus. The old form of Islam, which had managed to coexist with Tsarist and Communist Russia, is being supplanted by the fundamentalist variety imported from Saudi Arabia.

The BBC does a reasonable job of explaining current events in Dagestan. However, you’ll notice a persistent subtext in the narration: poverty and unemployment are somehow the root of the problem. Like most progressives, the BBC reporter strains to assign an economic cause, rather than an ideological one, to the radical Islamic incursion.

A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihadby the Counterjihad Collective

III. The Transatlantic Counterjihad at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)

One of the most important venues for Counterjihad NGOs to present their material has been at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The Transatlantic Counterjihad movement has represented several NGOs at OSCE roundtables and conferences. At these events it is possible to raise issues of importance, counter misuse of human right laws and conventions, submit papers to the official OSCE archives and forge alliances with other NGOs as well as representatives from the participating states.

General notes on making use of OSCE events

Participating in plenaries, round tables and side events

Presence at the conferences is of paramount importance. As a NGO representative, one not only gets to follow the discussions and talk to various representatives, there is also plenty of opportunity to get floor time, including at the large plenaries. Here one may raise issues of importance (must be on topic for the given conference, of course), comment on the importance of issues raised by others, and deflect unjust criticism against oneself or others. Conferences take place on a regular basis in Vienna, Austria and Warsaw, Poland. There is no participation fee for NGO representatives.

NGO Round table discussions

Alliances work particularly well in the open-ended round table discussions. If an issue or a point of view is raised by one representative, then supported by others, it will have a much greater impact than if merely mentioned, then forgotten. The official summaries of these meetings will also reflect what issues were highest on the agenda, and since the conclusions reflect a rough consensus of the round table, it is very feasible to prevent dangerous ideas from reaching the summaries.

Plenary sessions

The most important — and the largest — events at OSCE conferences are the plenary sessions. There will usually be roughly a hundred representatives of participating countries and NGOs, all competing for floor time and the right to comment. NGO representatives participate with country representatives on almost equal footing, the main difference being that state representatives have a Right of Response against criticism, which NGO representatives do not.

When preparing to speak at a plenary session, one must pick an issue on which to speak, then prepare a concise statement on it. The next step is to be early at the conference hall, get on the list of speakers, and find a seat with access to a microphone. There is a time limit of three or even two minutes per speaker, and violating that limit is generally frowned upon. Being concise is crucial, and quite useful as well. Three sharp points delivered in 90 seconds can make a much clearer impact than ten points pushed into three or four minutes of speaking time. A prepared, written statement can be handed over for the translators to use, that the statement gets translated into various non-English languages. English remains the main language of OSCE events, and since all presentations are translated to English or from English to other languages. Foreign language skills are not required to work effectively at OSCE events.

Apart from what one brings to the table, following the debate and making comments is equally useful. Not all participating states are equally ripe democracies, and some representatives may deliver unfair criticism (in particular of states) that deserve to be countered. As long as one has the audacity to get onto the speakers’ list, one can comment on any issue taken up in the plenary.

A peculiar effect is that the European Union and associated countries usually seek to speak in unified statements delivered by the current EU chairmanship. That is supposed to increase the impact made, but in practice that single statement tends to be quite toothless and drowned out by the myriad of other voices present, while also erasing the natural diversity of the European countries. For good or ill, this gives even more scope for NGOs to speak their opinions — an opportunity to be used, or important things will remain unsaid.

Side events

Side events are smaller meetings where NGOs and others present issues of concern needing more time than plenary sessions permit. Any NGO can register to host such events as long as rooms are available at the conference venues, and such events are listed in the official OSCE agendas for the conferences. Attendance is usually fairly moderate, though announcing the serving of refreshments is often used to attract a larger audience. The side events are run entirely by the NGOs themselves, and can for example be video-recorded and presented to the outside world later.

A high school teacher and homosexual rights activist is attempting to intimidate SUN TV and extort money from the network over its airing of a commercial opposing explicit gay-sex education for very young children. In the video below Brian Lilley takes exception to this blatant mau-mauing, and expresses his defiance of the mandatory “sensitivity training” demanded by the complainant, who also wants money from the network.

Friday, November 25, 2011

The Russian navy is approaching the gas-drilling area near Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean. The Russians and the Israelis plan to engage in joint military exercises in the region. Russia says it has interests in the area, and its military moves show that it intends to protect them.

In other news, a 13-pound baby boy was born in Berlin, setting a record for Germany’s heaviest naturally-born baby. His mother named him “Jihad”.

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“Islam means Peace”. However, in its 14-century long history it has rarely promoted peace. Violence in all its forms has been its hallmark The turbulent times that its founder, the Prophet Mohammed, peace be on him, saw and experienced convinced promoters of new religion that violence was the panacea for all worldly ills. The Prophet was himself banished from his place of birth and work, Mecca, to find refuge in Medina. It was only through an armed struggle that he regained Mecca. Thereafter it was the sword of Islam which spread the new faith to many continents. The faithful followers indeed reaped what they sowed.

The Prophet Mohammed breathed his last in 631 AD. The war of succession followed. The great divide then took place, followed by violence and war of great magnitude. The Shi’ite and the Sunni sects parted ways forever. The Sunnis almost imposed their will on Shi’ites regarding succession through violence and slaughter. The Shi’ites have been mourning their losses ever since.

Violence as a creed to give effect to political plans grew firm roots in Islam. Perhaps the terrorists of today have inherited this philosophy of life, along with a conviction that ends can be achieved by terrorising opponents. A terrorist snatches away from the terrorised individuals the most precious right, namely, the right to life. Obviously a civilised society cannot afford to find excuses to condone an act of terror, be it in the name of religion, faith or anything else.

Islam, as it is interpreted and practised in Madrassas, the archaic schools of religious teachings, breeds hatred for non-believers who are contemptuously called Kaffir. The maulvis and imams, in their post-prayer Friday prayer sermons, preach violence and contempt for those who do not believe in Islam. There may be exceptions, but these are few and far between. Those who do not believe in Islam are terrorised to embrace it. As a result, terror is promoted as a part of belief in Islam in Madrassas and mosques. Moderate elements in Islam turn Nelson’s eye to the spread of what Tony Blair termed a “perverted form of Islam”. Terror is the tactic to subjugate those men and women who do not toe the line of the promoters of the belief that the world revolves around Muslims, and that others have no right to live in it.

The archaic laws applied by Muslim countries are far removed from modern jurisprudence. The teachings by archaic schools of Islamic thought adopt the psychological methods of brainwashing, and convert young recruits ready to die for all the wrong reasons. The term fidayeen is an offshoot of an archaic and misplaced belief that an Islamic terrorist who kills others and is in turn killed goes to Heaven. Terror takes root in minds of men who discover this shortcut to Heaven.

It is relevant to add that the concept of Heaven in Islam is a place where a ghazi or a martyr receives in abundance all that is forbidden in this mortal world. Wine and women find a place of prominence among comforts offered to a martyr in an Islamic heaven.

Ezra Levant discusses the hypocrisy and shameless opportunism of environmental organizations like Greenpeace, who fleece credulous citizens while leaving a huge carbon footprint from their jet-set activities and lavish conferences.

The first Transatlantic Counterjihad conference was organized in the spring of 2007.

The online activities of the 910 Group had brought anti-sharia activists from Denmark, Britain, and the USA into contact with one another, and the Mohammed Cartoon Crisis had brought Denmark into prominence, so Copenhagen was the obvious choice for a venue. The UK and Scandinavia Counterjihad Summit was held there on April 14, 2007, under the auspices of Stop the Islamization of Denmark (SIAD).

The purpose of the meeting was to bring various groups into face-to-face acquaintance with one another, and to share information that would help them formulate strategies to oppose sharia and resist Islamization in their various countries. Representatives from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the USA were in attendance. For a report on the afternoon’s events, see this Gates of Vienna post.

Brussels, 2007

As a result of the preliminary work in Copenhagen, a more ambitious event was organized in Brussels on October 18-19, 2007, hosted by the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). Counterjihad Brussels brought together a large number of participants, and featured well-known experts on Islamic law and theology as speakers. The keynoter was Bat Ye’or, and other speakers included Andrew Bostom, Dr. Arieh Eldad MK, Lars Hedegaard, Prof. Hans Jansen, David Littman, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Sam Solomon, Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, and Robert Spencer.

Guest speakers were featured at the first day of the conference, which was held in the European Parliament building. The presentations were of two types: a speaker for each of the European countries that participated gave a report on the level of sharia and Islamization in his or her own country, and these country reports were interspersed with speeches and audio-visual material on topics of general interest to the Counterjihad.

Dr. Eldad’s presentation was particularly important, since the position of Israel is so crucial to the rest of the Western world. Israel, as a bastion of democracy in a despotic region, is on the front lines of the resistance to jihad. One of the major points of agreement among the participating organizations was the necessity for support of Israel.

On the second day, the conference reconvened at the Flemish Parliament. The day’s events consisted of workshops and a final plenary meeting before the conference concluded. During the day attendees broke up into smaller groups and attended facilitated workshops on practical ways to effect political and legislative change that could slow the spread of sharia in Europe.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Portuguese labor unions brought the country to a standstill today by staging a general strike. Workers were protesting the latest austerity measures proposed by the government to meet the conditions for another EU bailout. Coincidentally, the Fitch ratings agency downgraded Portugal’s debt today, due to the country’s less-than-optimal economic outlook.

In other news, a new report says that the increase in the minority population in the United States — up by 2% since the 2008 election — may guarantee the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama. The overwhelming majority of minority-Americans prefer Mr. Obama over any Republican, according to the latest polls.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JP, Kitman, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The trial of Mohammad Shafia has been big news in Kingston, Ontario for the last several weeks. Mr. Shafia is accused, along with his current wife and his son, of the “honor killing” of his three daughters and their mother, his ex-wife.

The video below is from a SUN TV news story about the case. In it you will hear a description of the testimony given by two school principals who failed to heed the warning signs displayed at school by two of the murdered girls, who were obviously in great distress not long before they were killed.

After Paul Weston published his brief account of our role in the Counterjihad Brussels 2007 conference, several people have asked me to write a history of the Counterjihad movement.

As it happens, such a history was already in preparation at the time Paul wrote his testimonial, and had been for several months. It was written by the Counterjihad Collective, a group of people (including myself) who have firsthand knowledge of the history of the transatlantic Counterjihad.

The paper has just been completed, but it’s too long for one blog post. I’ll post it here in eight parts, broken up into its numbered topics, which are of varying lengths.

Many thanks to all the people who contributed to this project.

A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihadby the Counterjihad Collective

I. Introduction

Over the past few years a transatlantic political and social movement that is now commonly known as the Counterjihad has gained increasing prominence. As it became more mainstream, it attracted attention from the legacy media, especially in Europe, where the debate over Islamization has made it to the pages of major newspapers.

The resistance to Islamization and sharia started long before September 11, 2001. The roots of the movement can be traced back to antiquity, since the first violent razzia against Christian civilization in the 7th century, under Mohammed and the early Caliphs. Successive jihad attacks destroyed the Christian cultures of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of southern Europe. With each wave of Islamic invasion, Europeans became aware of Islamic ideology through its deadly praxis. Popes, Patriarchs, and scholars wrote about the nature of the Mohammedan aggression, and the necessity for resistance to it. European Christians massed forces to launch Crusades in an attempt to reclaim Muslim-conquered territories in the Near East for Christendom.

Moorish Islam was expelled from Spain by the Reconquista in 1492, and the tide of the Ottoman expansion was turned back at the Gates of Vienna in 1683. For the next two centuries European civilization was ascendant, as Turkish power gradually receded and disappeared from the Balkans and Greece. Europeans were technologically superior to Islamic cultures, and became the colonial masters of Muslims in North Africa, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, and the archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean.

During those years the ideology of Islam ceased to matter to Europeans, and the violent and expansionist doctrines of the Koran, the hadith, and the Sunna no longer drew much attention among non-Muslims. Occasionally a European writer — most notably Winston Churchill, in The River War — would analyze the barbaric, inhumane, and imperialistic ideology of the Mohammedans. By and large, however, the menace of Islamic violence, which had been intimately familiar to millions of Europeans for a millennium, was forgotten.

All that changed when the ownership of Middle Eastern oil fields passed from European and American corporations into the hands of Muslim emirs. Suddenly the Islamic world was awash with wealth. And, for the first time in history, all that bounty became available to Muslims without the necessity of conquest and slaughter.

The reality of Islamic economic power drew the attention of the West during the oil crisis of 1974. The satraps of Muslim countries were able to put a thumb on the petroleum carotid of Western Europe and bring European political leaders to their knees. In the ensuing years, the Islamic colonization of London, Paris, Marseille, Brussels, and Rotterdam began in Europe. The first urban Islamic enclaves formed in those cities and others, becoming the nuclei of the notorious no-go zones and sharia enclaves that have metastasized for the last three decades all across Western Europe.

Among Sunni Muslims the fundamentalist revival was spearheaded by a group known as Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen, or the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood grew in popularity during the middle of the 20th century, even under official state repression by the Nasser regime. Al-Banna was assassinated in 1949, after which Sayyid Qutb took over the leadership of the group. Qutb was a prolific writer and theoretician, and his works inspired millions of Sunni Muslims throughout the Middle East and beyond. By the time he was hanged in 1966, the Muslim Brotherhood had become a formidable force in Middle Eastern politics, even though it was banned. The stage was thus set for the oil-funded Islamic revival.

The current crisis began with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The origins of the Counterjihad may be traced to the writer V.S. Naipaul, who was the first prominent observer to understand what was at stake, and what lay ahead. He visited Iran and other Muslim countries in the wake of the Iranian revolution in an attempt to understand the Islamic awakening. The following report, from the hinterlands of Sind in Pakistan, presents the Islamic worldview in a nutshell*:

English Defence League to enter electoral politics after signing pact with British Freedom Party

by Kevin Rawlinson

The English Defence League plans to field candidates for the first time in local elections after an alliance is finalised between the far-right group and the British Freedom Party, which was set up by disgruntled members of the British National Party.

Senior figures said that the EDL, which has become known for its protests in English towns with Muslim populations, needed to “detoxify” its name by moving into politics with an existing party. Their new partners hope to capitalise on the EDL’s ability to mobilise a large number of supporters.

Both groups will retain a measure of independence but will support each other. EDL members will be invited to join the newly affiliated political wing and stand as candidates under its name. “There is a gentleman’s agreement in place, we are looking at the EDL becoming political early next year,” said Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the leader of the far-right group. Mr Yaxley-Lennon, who also goes by the name Tommy Robinson, confirmed he had met the British Freedom Party leader Paul Weston and that discussions were at an advanced stage.

Mr Weston confirmed the plans and revealed he would offer Mr Yaxley-Lennon a place on the party’s executive committee. He added: “We are going to say we support the principles of the EDL. We will get a lot of people who can stand in local constituencies and they will get a genuine political party in return.”

The move is likely to meet with some resistance from those EDL members who want to see the group remain a “street movement”. Mr Yaxley-Lennon acknowledged the issue, saying he will consult the leaders of the group’s local divisions.

[…]

Babs Davis, an EDL member, backed the move if the leadership thought it was in the best interests of the group. “A lot of people have said that we should go political but the movement never really wanted to do it,” she said.

“If that is what Tommy Robinson thinks is the right thing to do, then I agree with him. I think he has done a brilliant job. The whole point of being in the EDL is to follow what the leadership says.”

Dr Goodwin, who is a professor at the University of Nottingham, said: “Since the widespread defeat for the BNP in last year’s general election, the far right-wing landscape of British politics has seen the emergence of several small political parties and movements, all attempting to fill the gaps left by Nick Griffin’s party and exploit wider public concerns about immigration.”

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers — and everyone else, too, for that matter.

Dymphna wrote her wrap-up to our Autumn Fundraiser on Tuesday, which amounted to an early Thanksgiving. However, one of the features of our quarterly fundraisers is that donations always continue to trickle in, even after the final wrap-up, making our thankfulness extend through the rest of the week.

A new country may now be added to the list of donors: Luxembourg. As far as I can recall, this is the first gift from Luxembourg we have ever received.

Other latecomers checked in from Australia, Florida, Illinois, Norway, Pennsylvania, and the UK. Once again, our gratitude goes out to all of those who contributed to a happy Thanksgiving here at Schloss Bodissey.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We’ve pointed out repeatedly over the last few years that our times seems to have a 1938 feel about them. There is a widespread sense that an enormous storm will soon shatter the illusory calm that has prevailed for the past four decades in the Western democracies. It’s impossible to predict exactly when the first lightning bolt will strike, and the crucial moment may not be as clear-cut as the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

As if the demographic crisis, the suppression of civil liberties, the Islamic incursions, and the Iranian nuclear threat weren’t enough, we now face an economic catastrophe that may well destroy the major currencies and wipe out the European Union along with our prosperity.

So the gratitude we feel for all that has been granted us by Providence is tempered by the melancholy sense that all we have now will not last much longer, for 1939 is surely bound to arrive.

With these somber thoughts in mind, we revisit a poem by Louis MacNeice written in the late 1930s. Like the poet, we remain grateful for the sunlight on the garden, while it remains:

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Belgium’s continuing failure to form a government has caused its borrowing costs to rise. Interest rates on its bonds have reached a ten-year high as investors reassess the risk of Belgian sovereign debt, given the current political crisis and the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 100%. Some observers believe that Belgium may be next in line after Italy for a euro-debt crisis.

Meanwhile, more and more people are touting Eurobonds as a solution to the EU’s fiscal woes. But the Netherlands is opposed to any creation of a Eurozone-wide bond.

In other news, the woman who is languishing in an Afghan jail for the crime of being raped has been offered a way out of her predicament: marry the man who raped her and fathered her child. She is reportedly willing to take the offer.

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Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.